“The moment that Taylor Swift walks onto the screen, for about five minutes nobody is going to be able to process anything.”
The year was 2009 and The Twilight Saga: New Moon released to record-breaking success at the box office. Fans all over the world flocked to see the second installment of the teen vampire drama. But what no one knew was that someone very important was missing from the film: Taylor Swift.
It turns out the singer, who was in a relationship with the franchise’s star Taylor Lautner at the time, was vying for a cameo in the movie — but it wasn’t meant to be.
In a new interview for The Twilight Effect, a podcast hosted by Twilight star Ashley Greene, director Chris Weitz revealed that Swift’s team fought hard for the pop sensation to be a part of the movie but that ultimately they had to turn her down.
“Taylor Swift and I had the same agent at the time, and he said, ‘Taylor would like to be in this movie — not because of you, but she’s a Twi-hard,'” Weitz said.
Swift was such a fan of the franchise, adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s books, that she just wanted to be on set in some capacity. Her agent told the filmmaker, “‘She will be someone at the cafeteria, or the diner, or whatever, but she just wants to be in this movie.'”
Alas, it was decided that Swift would be too much of a distraction if she popped up in Twilight’s sophomore outing, which featured Kristen Stewart’s Bella caught in a love triangle between Robert Pattinson’s sparkly vamp Edward Cullen and Lautner’s shirtless lycanthrope.
“The hardest thing for me was to be like, ‘The moment that Taylor Swift walks onto the screen, for about five minutes nobody is going to be able to process anything,'” Weitz said.
The director admits he had regrets, though, because it meant throwing away the chance to hang out with T-Swift. “I was like, ‘Wow, I could have been, like, hanging out with Taylor Swift, and maybe we could’ve been friends or something,'” he said. “She must’ve just been like, ‘Who is this jerk who would say no?’ But sometimes you make decisions and you go, ‘This is for the best.'”
Fortunately for Weitz, the “Shake It Off” hitmaker hasn’t released any vengeance tracks about him (yet).
Swift made her film debut in 2010’s romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, kissing none other than Jacob the Werewolf, a.k.a. Lautner, himself. She has also appeared on shows like CSI and New Girl.
It wasn’t only Swift’s Twilight aspires that came to an end in 2009 — she and Lautner split shortly after the film premiered in November of that year.
The singer did, however, find her way into another book-to-screen adaptation she felt passionately about, recording the song “Carolina” for the film Where the Crawdads Sing earlier this year.
A representative for Swift did not immediately respond to EW’s request for comment.
